


Garret

by wisdomeagle



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: A Little Princess - Freeform, Community: femslash_minis, Escape from Sunnydale, F/F, Season/Series 06, Secrets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-09-12
Updated: 2005-09-12
Packaged: 2017-11-16 06:20:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/536443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wisdomeagle/pseuds/wisdomeagle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Like something out of Burnett.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Garret

**Author's Note:**

> For femslash_minis free round, about hope, helping others, or overcoming adversity. I claimed Olivia because she's pretty.

Olivia is cocoa skin and smooth and mundane and soft and laughter. Olivia says, "Any friend of Rupert's is a friend of mine." Olivia's is the name Tara was given when she told Giles she was leaving; Olivia's is the name Tara finds herself saying at night when she cannot sleep. Olivia's is the name that cures and causes Tara's insomnia. Olivia is a cozy flat that makes England seem comfortable and warm; other-than-Olivia is cold and rainy, slushy London streets extracted from Dickens or, more familiarly, Burnett. She wanders the streets of London and pretends she is Sara Crewe, but there are no friendly, chubby boys to give her hand-outs or kindly bakers who sell her buns.

Olivia is suspiciously silent about Rupert; there are layers of secrets about what Tara knows and does not know about Giles's secret life. She is less fond than she used to be of the idea of a secret life; six months of Willow kept secret, six months of Willow's friends not knowing, a lifetime of secrets from her father, have made Tara crave the sunlight of honesty. But Giles warned her; Olivia does not like the knowledge that demons are real. They frighten her. 

Tara does not want to frighten Olivia, does not want to be a burden. She wants to be the safety to which Olivia comes home, the fire in the fireplace, the hot stew on the stove. She wants to be the sweep and swish of skirt and home, the comfort that her mother once was for her. The complicatedness of paying Olivia back for the kindness of her mother is best done simply, in small gestures, in unmystical potpourri and centerpieces, in hot water bottles tucked deep into Olivia's bed. They've traveled a century backwards to be together, to a time when two women living together in a flat in London were conveniently ignored, were friends or special friends, where neither one had to be the man because both were women, and this was one thing that Women Sometimes Did.

Tara pretends that Olivia knows this, but what Olivia knows is the financial district, and she knows it with tired shoulders that Tara rubs with oils that are not quite magic, knows it with deep sighs at the end of long days. She confesses, once, "Tara, it's good to have someone to come home to." And Tara blushes deep behind her ears and stammers that she's m-m-more than happy to be Olivia's homecoming.

Secrets. On the one hand, maybe this is a bad idea. Maybe she's here under false pretenses, maybe Olivia doesn't know she's praying to seduce her. Maybe she should be on her own, and maybe Olivia has secrets of her own. Maybe. She'd like things to be easy again, the way they were when Willow was everything, when they stood close to each other and magic tingled on the palms of her hands and they didn't need any words for the love that was new between them. 

There are no magical shortcuts to intimacy with Olivia, who is staunchly anti-magic and makes Tara wonder what she and Giles ever saw in each other. She is gentle and funny and sometimes mentions Rupert, in passing, as if he were an amusing accident that happened to her more times than he should have. 

"Do you miss him?" asks Olivia suddenly, in a way that makes Tara think she's been contemplating the question for months and finally can't help but blurt it out. "He's... he's a good lover, I'll grant you that." And Tara understands just how much she's been misunderstood.

"Oh-ohh. No. We're not... we never..." And she laughs. "I was dating a friend of his. A girl. W-willow. We were together for -- for a few years."

"What happened?" Olivia puts a hand on hers, and whether it's instinct or compassion, it soothes Tara enough to tell her. Truthfully, with words like "spells" and "magic" and "witch" that she's kept hidden, hidden, because Olivia doesn't want to believe they're true, because Olivia doesn't want to spend her life haunted by the spectres of the Gentlemen. 

She finishes lamely, words slurring into tears with, "and then I decided on England, and Giles gave me your name."

"And I'm more than glad to have you here," Olivia tells her, almost honest.

"I'm more than gl-glad to be here," Tara confesses, and there's more honesty in her words than she wants Olivia to realize. 

"Good. You're welcome to stay as long as you'd like, of course," Olivia tells her, patting her hand gently and conclusively, the end of the affair.


End file.
